


Ensnared

by Rose Emily (toomuchplor)



Category: Smallville
Genre: Drama, F/F, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-02
Updated: 2004-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 11:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/Rose%20Emily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lois privately thinks that it's much too late for Lana to be making proclamations on what she does or does not do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ensnared

"I don't do this." 

Her voice is small and sweet and it stumbles over the contours of Lois's cluttered urban abode. Lois looks up, ratcheting her chin into a dimple on the mattress, to see the sunlight shimmering along the line of Lana's back. 

Lois privately thinks that it's much too late for Lana to be making proclamations on what she does or does not do, but she refrains from saying so. Instead, she hauls herself up onto her knees and scoots back towards the bedside table, where a half-consumed pack of cigarettes is waiting for her. "I suppose you don't smoke, either?" Lois hears herself say, her voice sounding surprisingly scathing to her own ears. 

But Lana doesn't wince, as Lois expects she would, as Clark would have. Instead, she laughs, a painful abrupt sound. "You must think I'm such a child." 

It's true that there's a quality to Lana's voice, an April freshness, that promotes the idea of Lana as the eternal fairy princess, a girl forever on the brink of adulthood. But Lois finds, upon reflection, that she can't quite reconcile the quality of Lana's voice with what has just taken place. "No," Lois answers at length, lighting a cigarette. "He thinks you are, though." 

Another choked, bitter noise, imitating joy, and now she's facing Lois, still clasping the sheet to her breasts. "Oh, god, you won't tell him, will you?" 

And Lois wants to snort with laughter, that Lana could care, that it mattered to her what the perpetually-rejected Clark Kent thought of her. Lois wants to laugh, but she feels the same compulsion, somehow. Something about Clark makes Lois want to seem shiny and incorruptible, and as angry as that makes her, she can't deny Lana's right to the same reaction. So she shakes her head, exhaling a stream of smoke. "Clark and I aren't exactly on those terms." 

Lana's eyes go wide and dark, like one of the Sailor Moon girls, and she opens her mouth, just slightly, obviously hesitating over word choice. "What terms are you on?" she manages at last, and Lois can't suppress a grin at sussing out this mystery, untying this knot. Chloe always said that Lana's sweetness was something of an act, a lure for innocent farmboys, but Lois can see now that it's not an act at all. It's not a lure. Or if it is a lure, it's ensnaring Lana more than anyone else. 

"We're on professional terms," Lois begins, when she at last recalls why Lana's studying her so intensely. "I call him names, he pretends not to hate me. But we don't exactly stand around the water cooler on Monday morning, discussing who we nailed on the weekend." 

Lana's eyes do that classic 1930s actress flutter, that thing where sooty lashes beat together and then drop shyly as the heroine is overcome by some powerful emotion. The oddly delicate action is in sharp contrast to the slight afterglow that still lingers on Lana's skin. "Have you ever needed someone to tell you you're loved? Even if you don't feel the same way? Even if they love you for all the wrong reasons?" 

Lois nods slowly, knowing what Lana is trying to say. "And you want him to be there for that ... not just now, but forever?" 

Lana blinks once, and a single tear escapes down her cheek. Lois had a doll that did that trick, when she was a little kid -- Tiny Tears Betsy or something? The toy had always taken a backseat to Lois's exorbitant Barbie collection. "I'm selfish, I know," Lana admits, in that same heart-wrenching little girl voice. 

Lois leans back against the headboard, fighting down the wave of sympathy that's threatening to rise in her chest. "I have to go in to work," she says, tapping the ash of her cigarette into the empty wineglass on her night table. "Do you want to take a shower before you go?" 

Lois has startled another tear out of Tiny Tears Lana, but again, she tells herself that she doesn't care. The girl just nods and stands, gathering her sheet around her and quietly stepping towards the bathroom. She's almost in the doorway when she pauses, raising her head to meet Lois's gaze. 

Lana can look virginal even now. It's something in the curve of her neck, the way her slippery black hair glides against the snowy sheet. "It wasn't him, just now. I mean, he's not the one I --" A hectic flush. "The one I went to bed with." 

Lois is startled enough that she drops the rest of her cigarette into the wine glass, and she looks to see the filter turning pink in the dregs of the red wine. "No," Lois says quietly, to the cigarette butt. "I know." 

Lois rises when she hears the shower start running. As she dresses, she allows herself to wonder if this was really what she'd thought. Lois has always taken pleasure in seeing a mystery solved, and a seemingly pure thing debauched. Lana presented both challenges in one glossy pink package, and though it took the better part of a weekend, Lois won in the end. But Lana's confessions have made Lois uncomfortably aware of her own real motivations, of her sense that this is only part of a much more complex mystery, a more incorruptible perfection. 

Lois wonders whether it could stop here, or whether she really must keep going until, one day, it's Clark Kent in her shower. 


End file.
